So this week was a rather busy one with several game drives, a cheetah walk and a full day out on the quad finding rhinos... in the first rain we've had in the past 3 months (which was more then worth the wet socks).The week started good with following the lions down towards the river, they had been in the area for the last 2 days but out of range of us to off road to them.
What I wasn't expecting was to hit the end of the road and have all 5 of them just laying in the shade a few meters off the road.I pulled up and sat next to them for a few minutes, less then 10 meters away. I hopped out and with it being about 9:00am I decided, to the delight of the volunteers, that this would be a perfect spot to have some coffee and tea. After our 10 minutes break with lions I slowly took the car off road to get a better visual for the data log, and since they where still comfortable with the car, we enjoyed another 30 minutes just 3 meters from our 2 boys.
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| Lion tracks |
Then on my quad day with the rhinos I was tracking them down, which is rather difficult while raining, and happened to pass our drive which had gone off road to get a visual and they swung around and picked me up before heading back and watching our big male mating.Lion mating is a very vigorous affair, with quite a bit of mating required before the female will enter estrous, and in the 30 minutes we where there they mated 3 times. The process is rather short and can be painful when the male withdraws as his penis has small backward facing barbs that help induce oviation, but often leads to him being smacked by the angry female.
So hopefully we'll have a few new lion cubs come December!
